Organizations frequently partner with actors in their environment in order to increase competitive advantage, at times, even with competitors. During recent decades, researchers have therefore become interested in simultaneous cooperation and competition between organizations, which they refer to as coopetition. Despite the increasing trend of treating strategy as activities performed by individuals, there is limited knowledge concerning how coopetition emerges and becomes shaped by individuals.
The articles in this thesis address coopetition from a strategy-as-practice point of view, particularly taking an interest in how actors at different organizational levels make and give sense of emerging coopetition, i.e. coopetition agency creation. A longitudinal case study follows a strategic change process of implementing ongoing cooperation against a background of competition, from formulation to implementation. The case study findings show that coopetition requires modification in established cognitive frames, and that coopetition strategizing becomes complex stemming from the pluralism of views and attitudes across and within actor levels.
The findings not only extend the notion of influential strategic actors external and internal to the organization engaged in coopetition, but also problematize the coopetition strategists. It is suggested in the thesis that it is pivotal to understand what enables and hinders individuals’ participation in realizing coopetition strategies, before strategy development and outcomes can fully be understood. Moreover, rather than treating coopetition as a deliberate strategy resulting from pure intentional and rational processes, the findings prove that unintentional influences from multiple levels must also be taken into account.
Individual level differences in modifying past practice patterns to fit emerging coopetition are argued to be grounded in who strategists really are; in their backgrounds, histories, and motivations. Looking into the past is vital as the findings show; coopetition strategists across organizational levels hold multiple social identities that influence how sense of the present and future is made and given, and how different action patterns emerge, explaining why certain strategy outcomes are produced. The findings from the articles together emphasize how crucial talk and social interaction in different forms are to how far coopetition is accepted or resisted in organizations. However, different sensemaking patterns and different degrees of modifications in sustained structures and practices tell that accomplishing shared views on coopetition across inter- and intra-organizational levels becomes a challenge, and open future research paths to explore how coopetition frames are enacted over time.